E3 2008: The Agency Progress Report

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For the second time this show, there's not much progress to report.

By Greg Miller

All the cool kids in the IGN office are pretty pumped about The Agency, an massive multiplayer online title coming to the PlayStation 3 and PC that will let you live out your spy dreams; so it was a little disappointing to meet the fine folks at Sony Online Entertainment this morning and find out that they'd be showing the same demo they've been showing for months.

Don't get me wrong, it still looked like a lot of fun. The demo starts with the players picking which spy agency they'd like to join (U.N.I.T.E. is filled with slick James Bond types, while Paragon is a group of atypical hardass/shoot-first folks), creating a character, and then moving into the U.N.I.T.E. base. You tour the secret weapons facility that's testing a bulletproof corset and a man-eating bed, and then proceed into the following/fighting/shooting/diffusing bomb mission that has already been detailed twice.

Aside from the demo, I personally found the alias stuff to be the coolest. Some of the missions you go on will require to undercover, and that means you take on an alias. You'll enter an area in your disguise and have an alias rating to worry about. As you go about your task on site, the folks around you will begin to get suspicious and stare you down. As they do, your alias rating will begin to deteriorate. To stop the bleeding, you'll need to do something that they'd expect someone on site to do. If you're in a bar, take a drink. However taking too many can get you drunk. The ability to take on an alias is something that's exclusive to the stealth class. Combat and support are the other two units, but you can change your title whenever you want.

An SOE rep also mentioned during his presentation that the game will feature three types of missions to embark on -- 10 to 15-minute tasks, 20 to 35-minute missions, and hour-plus marathons -- and that The Agency will be shooting for bi-weekly episodic content upon release. Expansion packs will add locales, villains, and more.